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Saturday, May 31, 2008

In the late 1970s, with memories of Vietnam still raw and the Cold War
raging, hundreds of activists rallied in peace and justice movements,
pressing the government for change.

Here in Chicago, a former priest and a former nun saw a chance for
similar activism within the Roman Catholic Church. In 1976, Dan and
Sheila Daley launched Call To Action, a group of Catholics seeking to
act out God's vision in society and hold leaders accountable.

Hmmm..."similar activism"—that is, not just questioning authority, but rebelling against and undermining for one simple reason: it is authority. One has to wonder: how well can you hold leaders accountable to a certain standard when you deny, reject, and discard that very standard? Sure, it seems bold and controversial—

Bold and controversial from the start,

—told you so!—

Call To Action made history as
the first lay group to publicly question the church's prohibitions on
birth control, women's ordination, homosexuality and celibacy for
priests. Its actions paved the way for other reform groups, including
Voice of the Faithful and the Survivors Network of those Abused by
Priests.

—but that means little enough. Being "bold and controversial" is only as good as the things you are being bold and controversial for and about. Saints Peter and Paul were also "bold and controversial" in their time, and its instructive to note that their witness, which involved being martyred for their Master, has lasted two thousand years, while the, um, witness of Call to Action and Co. is fading fast.

The question is whether the next generation will take up the call. Many
of the Catholic priests and laypeople who pushed for more far-reaching
change after the Second Vatican Council are now 60 or older. In
addition, church activists see the papacies of Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI,
as bringing church reform to a near-standstill. Because of that, some
observers think the couple's exit may signal the end of an era.

"What we're seeing today with Catholics under 40 is, frankly, the reason they're not joining groups like Call To Action is not because they agree with the bishops. It's because they don't care," said Rev. Thomas Reese, senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center.

And why, Father Reese, do you think that is? Is it because they—having received a meaningful and meaty catechesis, spent regular time in Eucharistic adoration, attended reverent liturgies, and been immersed in the teachings and practices of the Church—have become bored, listless, and otherwise disgusted? Or could it be that they—having been shown and told in countless ways that Church teaching is either silly or meaningless, endured banal music and liturgies, and been spoon fed endless bowls of indifferentism and relativism—finally said, "Yeah, this really is silly and meaningless. I'm outta here!"? Could it be that they don't care about the agenda of Call to Action because that agenda is largely stuck in the Sixties and is based on a seriously flawed assumption: that making the Church more like the world will attract more people to the Church.

Nicole Sotelo, 30, Call to Action's program coordinator, said NextGen
members recently created a group on Facebook, the popular Internet
meeting place. In May, they also launched a blog for young Catholics at
youngadultcatholics-blog.com.

In related news, it is estimated that 138 trillion high school and college students already have Facebook pages (heck, I have one!) and that 453 quadtrillion people have blogs (me too!). Welcome to the the 21st century!

"I think many young Catholics have not found the church to be a
welcoming place, and they have left. So we're trying to reach them,"
she said.

Sotelo said future battles for Call To Action will focus on monitoring
sexual abuse reforms, fighting racism in the church and protecting the
environment, which is the theme for this year's convention, to be held
Nov. 7-9 in Milwaukee.

I'd like to hear some of those conversations. I can only imagine...:

Call to Action Person (CAP): Say, are you a Catholic?

Former Catholic (FC): Yeah...so?

CAP: Why don't you come back to the Church?

FC: Uh, why? It's boring. And stupid. And backwards.

CAP: But we're working hard to make it hip and smart. And progressive. Very progressive and forward-thinking. For example, we're starting to work to save the whale and rain forests.

FC: Nice. But I'm already a member of several ecologically sensitive, earth-friendly groups. Have been since 1992.

CAP: Oh, yeah, of course. We're working on that. We have committees and focus groups looking into all of that right now. And we're fighting for women priests.

FC: Well, the Episcopalian group I spend time with has had women priests for years. We never use gender-specific pronouns. And my yoga classes and Buddhist prayers give me the spiritual insight and balance I need.

CAP: [Excitedly] Buddhism! Yeah, that's great stuff! And yoga. I want to do yoga. Uh [recovering composure], but don't you want to be Catholic and do all of that stuff?

But if you ask what the founders believe has been their greatest
accomplishment, Sheila Daley said it is creating a place for
progressive Catholics to find community.

"I think we have been a very significant support to people who are
trying to live out this kind of vision of their Christianity and
Catholicism and have felt isolated and alone," she said. "Through us,
they have found other people that they can gather with who have that
similar vision. That's almost the most important thing."

And what is the most important thing? Rebelling against authority, apparently. That seems bold and controversial, but it is nothing compared to the witness of Peter and Paul, who were rebels in many ways, but were ultimately disciples. They didn't simply define themselves by what they denied (sin, the world, etc.), but by what they embraced, namely, the Person and the Cross of Christ. In the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar:

Everything that I am (insofar as I am anything more on this earth than a fugitive figure without hope, all of whose illusions are rendered worthless by death), I am solely by virtue of Christ's death, which opens up to me the possibility of fulfillment in God. I blossom on the grave of God who died for me. I sink my roots deep into the nourishing soil of his flesh and blood. The love that I draw in faith from this soil can be of no other kind than the love of one who is buried.

"Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts,and be renewed in the spirit of your minds..." (Eph 4:22-23; emphasis added). Now that is a true call to action.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters posts about a May 30th Associated Press piece that originally stated that the Vatican is "slamming the door on attempts by women to become priests in the Roman Catholic Church." As Shepherd notes, "But it's rather hard to slam shut a door that was never open, which is
what Catholic Church teaching holds about women serving in the
priesthood." The piece has since been revised:

The Vatican insisted Friday that it is properly following Christian tradition by excluding females from the priesthood as it issued a new warning that women taking part in ordinations will be excommunicated.

The move dashed the hopes both of women seeking to be priests and of Catholics who see that as an option for a church struggling to recruit men.

Yes, dashes their hopes just like I dash the hopes of my three-year-old son each and every morning when he asks some variation of this question: "Can I have a cookie for breakfast?" He knows what the answer will be, but still keeps up his hopes by arguing, for example, "But I want a cookie for breakfast!" This is accompanied on occasion with the raising of voice and a certain belligerent stare. The answer remains the same.

The difference, of course, is that if I gave my son a cookie at 8:42 a.m., I wouldn't be violating or undermining the teaching of Jesus and His Church. Then again, my son is three years old, and I have modest hopes that by the time he is, say, thirty-six-years old, he'll understand why I so often dashed his hopes of cookies for breakfast.

Back to the AP piece:

The church has always banned the ordination of women by stating that
the priesthood is reserved for males. The new decree is explicit in its
reference to women.

Thank goodness, since it has been a rather murky, uncertain issue until now. Ha. Not at all. What is hard to understand about this section from the Catechism, which quotes from the Code of Canon Law?

"Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination." The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ's return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible. (CCC 1577)

"I want a cookie for breakfast!"

The answer is still the same. And yet, for some reason, I suspect the same women and their supporters will continue to say the same thing.

I have attempted not so much to speak with authority of things that I know,
as to seek to know them by speaking about them with reverence. --
St. Augustine, De Trinitate, I v. 8

In our inquiry into the devotion to the Sacred Heart and its perennial value,
it is best to begin with a proper understanding of what is meant by devotion.
St. Thomas Aquinas defines devotion as a willingness "to give oneself
readily to what concerns the service of God" (Summa, II-II, q. 82 a. 1). Accordingly, the devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus appears essentially as a worship of and a response to
the Person of Christ as viewed from the perspective of His divine and human
love which is manifested through His sacred humanity and is symbolized by His
wounded physical Heart. In his masterful encyclical, Haurietis Aquas, Pope Pius XII gives the following definition of
this devotion:

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by its very nature is a worship of the love
with which God, through Jesus, loved us, and at the same time, an exercise of
our love by which we are related to God and to other men.

From this definition it can be seen that authentic devotion to the Sacred Heart
is not merely an optional set of pious practices (which may be very helpful)
but an essential element of the Christian way of life. All Christians are
called to the comprehension of certain truths concerning God and to a response
in love to them. In living a life in imitation of Christ, as found in the Gospels
and taught by the Church, the Christian should use all the spiritual aids
offered to him by God. He should fill his life with an ever growing and
deepening love for God and his fellow man. Every Christian will build his own unique
spirituality upon this common foundation, which should include a response to
the Heart of Christ that gives honor to the divine love and is offered for the
sake of that love.

The Truth About Joan of Arc | The Foreword and Preface to
The Retrial of Joan of Arc
by Régine PernoudForeword to The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence
For Her Vindication by Régine
Pernoud | Katherine Anne Porter

In the many hundreds of books in French about the condemnation and retrial of
Joan of Arc, the authors invariably base their criticism of the first trial on
the evidence given by witnesses in the second. None of these books has been
translated into English. The French seem to write them for each other, or
perhaps even at this late day the English reader does not enjoy seeing his
nation put so soundly and irreparably in the poorest light of its history.
Whatever the reason, this is the first book based firmly on the retrial of Joan
of Arc to be translated into English, and the whole tremendous history is told
again, this time by her childhood playmates and relatives, her royal and noble
friends, her confessor, her valet, her squires and heralds, and her fellow
soldiers. There are a few of the old enemies of the first court still in Rouen,
but they can do her no more harm: and indeed their presence here perhaps lends
even a more powerful authenticity to this story than if we heard only from her
friends.

It is indeed a beautiful book, well translated, with the speed and symmetry and
direction of the life it celebrates; and besides its merit as a work of
scholarship, there is warmth and sanity in it, often absent from books about
Joan of Arc, who inspires strange fervors and theories.

Another helpful lesson in canon law from Dr. Ed Peters, author of Excommunication and the Catholic Church, on the "In the Light of the Law" blog:

As I pointed out some time ago (scroll to 6 July 2005), the 1983 Code does not levy excommunication on those who simulate the conferral and reception of holy orders on women. Canon 1378 excommunicates non-priests who simulate Eucharist and confession, and Canon 1379 imposes "a just penalty" on those who simulate the other sacraments (such as holy Orders), but neither canon directly excommunicatesthose who simulate holy Orders.
The excommunications that have been applied in some cases of female
'ordination' have been imposed in virtue of a combination of other
canons (e.g., Abp. Burke's model action in March 2008), which works fine of course, but it seems somewhat cumbersome to those who do not know canon law well.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Saint Louis
Catholic has learned that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith has rejected the recourse of the Board of Directors of the former
St. Stanislaus Parish filed in March 2006, confirming the Decree of
Excommunication issued by Archbishop Burke on December 15, 2005.

In vindication of Archbishop Burke, the Vatican found that the Board committed the delict
of schism. Further, it held that the Board neglected to file within the
legal deadline, and that it was negligent in failing to comply with the
requirements of Canon Law.

The new film version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
coming out from BBC Films this fall has generated some discussion
regarding faithfulness to the text, on one hand, and whether Waugh's
novel of decadence and theology can be made intelligible to popular
culture at all, on the other. As a contribution to the discussion, we
have brought up from our archives the 1983 article, The Death of Charm and the Advent of Grace: Waugh's Brideshead Revisited,
by Thomas Prufer. Prufer, who taught philosophy at the Catholic
University of America from 1960 to 1993, argues in this short text that
Waugh's achievement in the novel is "to have made a work in which the
integrities of both art and faith are respected in their interaction,"
and offers a reading of the novel's depiction of the place of worldly
charm: as only a forerunner, but also a real forerunner, of grace.

Aquinas and More has once again selected a variety of books for summertime reading. You can visit CatholicSummerReading.com and vote for the books you will read, want to read, think others should read, etc. It goes without saying—and yet I am going to say it—that you should vote for Ignatius Press books. Really, how could you not?

• The Thin Man (1933), by Dashiell Hammett. Some deep reading to balance out the lighter stuff above.

• Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2006), by Michael Pollan. I've been reading this off and on for a couple of months now. I'll never look at food the same way again. And I still have a couple of hundred pages to go. I may starve to death before it's finished.

• Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs (IVP, 2008), by James A. Herrick. I really enjoyed his fine book, The Making of the New Spirituality (IVP, 2003), and expect this to be excellent as well.

• The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God (Crossroad, 2006), by Stratford Caldecott. An exceptional British author draws upon Scripture, patristics, and ressourcement theology to reflect on the sacraments.

• The Divine Comedy, by Dante. Yep, still working on it. Slowly.

And, if times allows:

• The Tripods Attack! (Imagio/Sophia, 2008), by John McNichol. The first volume of "The Young Chesterton Chronicles."

Inside Catholic:What moved you to write a book about secrecy in the Church?

Russell Shaw: I guess I first became conscious of the problem in 1969, when I went to work for the bishops' conference as director of information. At the time, the bishops' relations with the press were in terrible shape, and much of the tension focused on the bishops' general meetings. They were entirely in executive session, with no reporters and observers allowed in. Yet the bishops invited reporters to come to the meeting and cover it -- which they did, partly by means of briefings and partly by means of leaks. Needless to say, there was no good reason for all that secrecy. The situation was a mess and very harmful to the bishops' own best interests.

I was one of those who helped get them to open the meetings, starting in 1972. That arrangement worked well for the next 20 years, but starting in the mid-1990s, when I was no longer with the bishops' conference but was covering the bishops as a journalist, I realized that, without any announcement or explanation, they were spending more and more of their meeting time in secret session behind closed doors. Once again, there was no good reason for so much secrecy. So I started writing about that and about secrecy in the Church in general.

Then came 2002 and the sex-abuse scandal. The cover-ups were a big part of it. Now it was clear that the abuse of secrecy wasn't just counterproductive -- it was capable of doing very serious harm in a very serious matter. I concluded that to do justice to the problem would take a book. Nothing To Hide is the result.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

From a LifeSiteNews.com article about how San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom—a Catholic, it is rumored—is "shocked" and "outraged" about "a proposal that would allow San Diego county clerks to decline to perform same-sex 'marriages' on conscience grounds":

California will have the marriage licenses changed and new directives
written to county clerks before June 16, when the California Supreme
Court's ruling goes into effect.

California's marriage license currently asks for the name of the
bride and groom, but these names are being excised in favor of
gender-neutral contract language.

Can we be confident that even same sex marriage is the ultimate goal? I
think the honest answer is no. The freight train of same sex marriage
will not stop at the station called simple “equality.” The legal
equivalence of same sex couples with opposite sex couples means that
marriage will no longer be society’s most reliable method of attaching
mothers and fathers to their children and to each other. Marriage will
become a gender-neutral creation of the state, which actively detaches
children from at least one of their parents. Parentage will not flow
automatically from the marital union, but will have to be assigned by
the state. The final stop on this train is the complete de-gendering of
society, along with the continual incursion of the state into civil
society.

The state must hold that mothers and fathers are completely
interchangeable. Biological parents married to each other become
officially equivalent to one parent plus their lover. The state will be
indifferent as to whether children have any connection with their
biological parents.

The experiences of other countries with same sex marriage illustrate
that this is no mere expansion of an existing institution. In Spain,
the words “mother” and “father” were removed from birth certificates in
favor of “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B”. Courts in Canada have
assigned parental rights to three adults. Similar experiences from
Massachusetts and the UK leave no doubt that the state will have to
continually intervene to prop up same sex marriage, and the
gender-oblivious society that comes along with it. Sexual orientation
will be viewed as immutable, with sex itself as a mere social construct.

Word and language, in essence, do not constitute a specific or specialized area; they are not a particular discipline or field. No, word and language form the medium that that sustains the common existence of the human spirit as such. The reality of the word in eminent ways makes existential interaction happen. And so, if the word becomes corrupted, human existence itself will not remain unaffected and untainted. ... words convey reality. We speak in order to name and identify something that is real, to identify it for someone, of course ... (p 15).

And, a bit later: "Public discourse itself, separated from the standard of truth, creates on its part, the more it prevails, an atmosphere of epidemic proneness and vulnerability to the reign of the tyrant" (p 31). Yes, abuse of the language has been going on with "different sex couples" for a while as well. But this is abuse of language that is nothing short of Orwellian, a sort of sexualized, politicized sophistry.

...pro-abortion "Catholics." Tim Rutten, in an op-ed for today's edition of L.A. Times (ht: Augustine II), one of the most overt Catholic-bashing newspapers in the nation, is clearly angry that Archbishop Naumann has the audacity—nay, the arrogant gall!—to tell prominent Catholic politicians to follow Church teachings:

Recently, however, she has run afoul of Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas. As the Catholic News Service reported earlier this month, the bishop has told the governor that she "should stop receiving Communion until she publicly repudiates her support of abortion and makes a 'worthy sacramental confession.' " In a column for his diocesan newspaper, Naumann wrote that he was particularly outraged by Sebelius' veto of an antiabortion bill, which she -- and nearly every legal scholar who examined it -- believed was unconstitutional.

Naumann dismissed Sebelius' insistence that she personally opposes abortion, and her assertion that because of her pro-adoption policies and improvements in public health services for pregnant women, Kansas' abortion rate has declined significantly. The prelate said that in a private conversation he'd had with Sebelius, the governor said she was "obligated to uphold state and federal laws and court decisions related to abortion." Naumann said he demanded that she show "a similar sense of obligation to honor divine law and the laws, teaching and legitimate authority within the church."

Now there's about as nasty and as utterly avoidable a church-state confrontation as you're likely to see.

Yeah, right: a bishop of the Catholic Church, whose primary duty is to uphold and defend and teach Catholic doctrine, is close to shredding the political fabric of this country by telling a Catholic that she needs to adhere to Church teaching. Give me a break. Rutten is, however, completely on the mark with this comment: "Sebelius, in other words, is a Democratic politician who not only talks the Obama talk but walks the Obama walk." Yes, she sure does, having made it clear that she would rather worship at the altar of Moloch than submit herself to the clear teaching of the Church in which she claims faithful membership.

Rutten then becomes completely unhinged:

But hey, guilt by association is fun to play -- and almost nobody is as practiced at it as Novak [Rutten is referring to this May 26, 2008 column by Robert Novak] -- so why not take it in a different direction? Novak is a relatively recent convert to Catholicism, and the priest who helped him into the church is Father C. John McCloskey, who also has been instrumental in obtaining the conversions of, among others, Alfred Regnery, the country's foremost publisher of extreme right-wing literature; Lewis Lehrman, the former New York gubernatorial candidate and conservative think-tank impresario; former GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas; and economist and CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow.

McCloskey also happens to be a priest of the ultra-conservative and secretive -- some would say sinister -- Catholic organization Opus Dei. You don't have to buy into Dan Brown's preposterous caricature of Opus Dei in "The Da Vinci Code" to know that it really never has fallen all that far from its roots in Francisco Franco's Spain.

Can anyone explain how Rutten's description of Opus Dei is any less of a mean-spirited caricature than Dan Brown's? Is it simply because he doesn't outrightly accuse Opus Dei of murder? And how does Rutten think Fr. McClowskey "obtained" those conversions? By blackmail? By using the rack? Hypnosis? Parlor tricks? Promises of 70 virgins in heaven? (Actually, Fr. McCloskey co-authored a book for Ignatius Press about how he "obtains" conversion. He actually gives all credit to the Holy Spirit.)

Here, then, is Rutten's central contention:

So, does that make Novak's rhetorical shivving of Sebelius part of a right-wing plot to bring the United States under the sway of neo-fascist clericism?

Of course not; it's an absurd and rather vicious notion, but no more so than the implication that Sebelius -- or by extension, Obama -- is in the pay of something called "the abortion industry."

Whatever money may or may not exchange hands is, I think, secondary to an established fact: Obama, Sebelius, and Co. are completely committed to abortion in every way possible. And abortion in this country is zealously supported by groups such as Planned Barrenhood and NARAL, whose main work is providing abortions and making money in the process. So it is hardly insignificant that Senator Obama said, not long ago: "Throughout my career, I've been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America." Also see Obama's July 2007 speech before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in which he stated:

We know that a woman’s right to make a decision about how many children she wants to have and when—without government interference—is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have in this country. ...

I have worked on these issues for decades now. I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional Law. Not simply as a case about privacy but as part of the broader struggle for women’s equality. ...

There will always be people, many of goodwill, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find common ground. Because we know that what’s at stake is more than whether or not a woman can choose an abortion.

Choice is about how we lead our lives. It’s about our families and about our communities. It’s about our daughters and whether they’re going to have the same opportunities as our sons. There are those who want us to believe otherwise. They want us to believe that there’s nothing that unites us as Americans—there’s only what divides us. They’ll seek out the narrowest and most divisive ground. That is the strategy—to always argue small instead of looking at the big picture. They will stand in the way of any attempt to find common ground.

In light of those comments, it seems obvious that Obama (and, it is safe to say, Sebelius as well) understand something that Rutten does not: this is not ultimately about money or payments or even political support, however important those things are. It is about a set of beliefs that is completely committed to an individualistic autonomy and a relativistic morality that is absolutely contrary to Catholic teaching, good reason, and sound moral judgment—a belief system that says, "It's alright to kill your unborn child and it is immoral and intolerant for others to judge that action." Rutten, in other words, exposes the sort of thinking so typical of those committed to secularism, which rests on the premise that that which is political trumps everything else, including religion, metaphysics, philosophy, tradition, and even science. Thus, he thinks this is about the Church undermining the state when it is really about about a bedrock, fundamental disagreement over the value and meaning of human life. In the words of Archbishop Naumann:

While one can be a faithful Catholic and support a wide diversity of
strategies on the vast majority of issues, it is not possible to
compromise on the sanctity of human life.

For the Catholic in
public life, the unequivocal defense of such a fundamental human right
is not imposing one’s Catholic faith upon others. The fact that the
church addresses the morality of such a basic right does not make this
an exclusively religious issue. Just as supporting public policies that
prohibit stealing, racism, or murder — moral issues also very clearly
addressed by the church — is not an imposition of Catholic doctrine,
neither is advocating for policies that protect human life in its
earliest stages.

My May 9 column, making public my request to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius
not to present herself for reception of holy Communion until she had
sought to repair the public scandal of her long-standing support for
legalized abortion, not surprisingly has initiated quite a bit of
discussion in secular newspapers, local talk radio shows and
coffee-break conversations. I have personally received a
significant number of pro and con communications. While I attempt to
acknowledge every letter I receive, it is not possible for me to make
an in-depth response to each one. Similarly, it is not possible for me
to respond to every newspaper editorial, letter to the editor or radio
caller.

In this column, I want to provide you with my responses to some of the
more common questions and misunderstandings regarding my pastoral
action. I hope this is helpful for your own personal understanding.
However, I also hope that it makes you feel more confident and better
informed so that you can explain to others who have questions and
concerns.

Q.
Why was the governor singled out for this pastoral discipline? Are
there not others in elective office who hold similar positions?

A.
Governor Sebelius holds the highest elective office in the state of
Kansas, making her the most prominent Catholic in public life. It is a
time-intensive process to enter into verbal and written dialogue, as is
necessary, to insure a person is aware of the spiritual and moral
consequences of their actions, as well as to understand the scandal
their actions cause for others. It is my intention eventually, as much
as the limitations of my own time permit, to have similar pastoral
dialogues with other Catholics in elective office who support legalized
abortion.

VATICAN CITY, 28 MAY 2008 (VIS) - In his general audience today, held in St. Peter's Square, the Pope turned his attention to St. Gregory the Great, who was Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604 and whom "tradition deemed worthy of the title of 'Magnus', the Great".

Gregory, said the Holy Father, "truly was a great Pope and a great Doctor of the Church". He was born in Rome in 540 to a rich and noble family, which stood out "for its attachment to the Christian faith and for its service to the Apostolic See".

Benedict XVI recalled how Gregory first entered upon an administrative career, becoming prefect of Rome in 572. "However such a life cannot have satisfied him for shortly afterwards he decided to abandon all public office and withdraw to his house on the 'Clivius Scauri', beginning life as a monk". In this way "he acquired a profound knowledge of Holy Scripture and of the Fathers of the Church, which he later used in his own works".

Gregory's skills and experience caused Pope Pelagius II to appoint him as deacon and send him as ambassador to Constantinople "to help surmount the last vestiges of the Monophysite controversy and, above all, to obtain the emperor's support in the struggle to counteract the pressure of the Lombards". A few years later, "he was called back to Rome by the Pope who made him his secretary". When Pelagius II died, Gregory succeeded him in the See of St. Peter. It was the year 590.

A large number of documents have been conserved from Gregory's pontificate, said the Pope, "thanks to the 'Registro' which includes around 800 of his letters. ... Among the problems afflicting Italy and Rome at that time, was one of particular weight in both civil and ecclesial life: the question of the Lombards". Gregory established "fraternal relations with them, with a view to a future peace founded on mutual respect and the serene coexistence of Italians, Greeks and Lombards".

Negotiations with the Lombard king, Agilulf "led to a truce which lasted for nearly three years (598-601), after which it proved possible to stipulate a more stable armistice in 603", said the Holy Father. "This positive result was possible also thanks to the contacts which the Pope had, in the meantime, established with Queen Theodelinda, a Bavarian and a Catholic. ... Little by little Theodelinda managed to lead the king to Catholicism, thus preparing the way for peace". The "beautiful" story of this queen, said the Pope, "demonstrates the importance of women in the history of the Church".

"Pope Gregory was also active in the field of social work. With the income of the considerable patrimony which the See of Rome possessed in Italy, especially in Sicily, he bought and distributed grain, helped those in need, assisted poverty-stricken priests, monks and nuns, paid the ransom of citizens who had fallen prisoner to the Lombards, and bought armistices and truces".

"Gregory", the Pope explained, "undertook these intense activities despite poor health which often forced him to keep his bed for days on end. ... Notwithstanding the difficult conditions in which he had to work, he managed, thanks to the holiness of his life and his abundant humanity, to conquer the trust of the faithful, achieving what, for his own time and for the future, were truly grand results".

"He was a man immersed in God. The desire for God was perpetually alive in the depths of his soul and precisely for this reason he always remained close to others, to the needs of the people of his time. At a time of disaster - a desperate time - he managed to create peace and bring hope. This man of God shows us", Benedict XVI concluded, "where the true sources of peace are, where true hope comes from, and thus he is also a guide for us today".

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

A wonderful piece of sculpture adorning the cathedral of Chartres represents
Adam, head and shoulders barely roughed out, emerging from the earth from which
he was made and being molded by the hands of God. The face of the first man
reproduces the features of his modeler. This parable in stone translates for
the eyes the mysterious words of Genesis: "God made man in his own image
and likeness."

From its earliest beginnings Christian tradition has not ceased to annotate
this verse, recognizing in it our first title of nobility and the foundation of
our greatness. Reason, liberty, immortality and dominion over nature are so
many prerogatives of divine origin that God has imparted to his creatures.
Establishing man from the outset in God's likeness, each of these prerogatives
is meant to grow and unfold until the divine resemblance is brought to
perfection. Thus they are the key to the highest of destinies.

Lorraine V. Murray, author of Confessions
of an Ex-Feminist, has recently written a couple of fine columns for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about motherhood. As Murray explains in her book, she does not have children due to choices she made as a radical feminist with a negative, self-absorbed view of motherhood and having children. In a May 3rd column, she writes:

Mother's Day can be
painful for women without children. We yearn to read the flowery cards,
exclaim over mysterious packages and bury our noses in satiny bouquets.

Of course, I am delighted each year when my goddaughter remembers me
with chocolates, but still I look back at my younger self and say,
"Girl, what were you thinking?"

What were you thinking when you became so embroiled in the feminist
movement that you embraced every tarnished bit of propaganda? What were
you thinking when you saw pregnancy as a problem, not a blessing? And
when you turned to that feminist so-called solution known as abortion?

What where you thinking when you later hopped aboard the
childless-by-choice bandwagon? That agenda was dubbed "child-free," by
the way, a word implying a delicious state of unencumbered being.

We like comments. Chances are, we like your comments. And if you don't comment, well, give it a try sometime.

Unfortunately, every once in a while someone comes along and leaves comments that aren't helpful, or are even offensive, rude, insulting, and so forth. When such comments appear on recent posts, I usually catch them. But when they are left on posts that are several months or even years old, I sometimes don't.

So I will now, for the time being, read each comment before allowing it to to appear on the blog. Therefore, if you don't see your comment show up immediately, that's the reason. I will, of course, try to get to each comment as quickly as possible.

Thanks for understanding. And for commenting. We now return you to our regularly scheduled posts.

That's what I did for an hour last week when I was a guest on Relevant Radio's "Searching the Word." The program''s content was based upon a 2002 article I wrote for The Catholic Faith magazine (unfortunately, it isn't currently online; I may revise it and post it on Ignatius Insight). You can listen by going to the audio archive and finding the entry for Tuesday, May 20th; it can be downloaded as an mp3 file or listened to in a streaming format.

VATICAN CITY, 27 MAY 2008 (VIS) - The Vatican Publishing House has recently released a new edition of the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, comprising information on the main aspects of Catholic Church activity in various countries for the period 2000-2006.

Over these seven years, the Catholic presence in the world has remained stable at around 17.3 percent of the total population. In Europe, despite the fact that 25 percent of all Catholics live there, the growth in the number of faithful was less than one percent. In the Americas and in Oceania their numbers grew, respectively, by 8.4 percent and 7.6 percent; in Asia they remained more or less stable with respect to population growth, whereas in Africa they increased from 130 million in 2000 to 158.3 million in 2006.

The number of bishops in the world went up from 4,541 in 2000 to 4,898 in 2006, an increase of 7.86 percent.

The number of priests also increased slightly over this seven-year period, passing from 405,178 in 2000 to 407,262 in 2006, an overall rise of around 0.51 percent. In Africa and Asia their numbers increased (respectively, by 23.24 percent and 17.71 percent), in the Americas they remained stable, while they fell by 5.75 percent in Europe and 4.37 percent in Oceania.

The number of diocesan priests increased by two percent, going from 265,781 in 2000 to 271,091 in 2006. By contrast, the number of regular priests showed a constant decline, down by 2.31 percent to 136,000 in 2006. Of the continents, only in Europe was there a clear reduction in priests: in 2000 they represented 51 percent of the world total, in 2006 just 48 percent. On the other hand, Asia and Africa together represented 17.5 percent of the world total in 2000 and 21 percent in 2006. The Americas remained steady at around 30 percent, and Oceania a little more than one percent.

Non-ordained religious numbered 55.057 in the year 2000 and 55,107 in 2006. Comparing this data by continent, Europe showed a strong decline (down by 12.01 percent), as did Oceania (16.83 percent), the Americas remained stable, while Asia and Africa increased (respectively, by 30.63 percent and 8.13 percent).

Female religious are almost double the number of priests, and 14 times that of non-ordained male religious, but their numbers are falling, from 800,000 in 2000 to 750,000 in 2006. As for their geographical distribution, 42 percent reside in Europe, 28.03 percent in America and 20 percent in Asia. The number of female religious has increased in the most dynamic continents: Africa (up by 15.45 percent) and Asia (up by 12.78 percent).

The Statistical Yearbook of the Church also includes information on the number of students of philosophy and theology in diocesan and religious seminaries. In global terms, their numbers increased from 110.583 in 2000 to more than 115.000 in 2006, a growth of 4.43 percent. In Africa and Asia their numbers went up whereas Europe saw a reduction of around 16 percent.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a fascinating piece by Thomas Bartlett titled, "The Betrayal of Judas," (May 30, 2008 issue) and subtitled: "Did a 'dream team' of biblical scholars mislead millions?"

One of the seven million people who watched the National Geographic documentary was April D. DeConick. Admittedly, DeConick, a professor of biblical studies at Rice University, was not your average viewer. As a Coptologist, she had long been aware of the existence of the Gospel of Judas and was friends with several of those who had worked on the so-called dream team. It's fair to say she watched the documentary with special interest.

As soon as the show ended, she went to her computer and downloaded the English translation from the National Geographic Web site. Almost immediately she began to have concerns. From her reading, even in translation, it seemed obvious that Judas was not turning in Jesus as a friendly gesture, but rather sacrificing him to a demon god named Saklas. This alone would suggest, strongly, that Judas was not acting with Jesus' best interests in mind — which would undercut the thesis of the National Geographic team. She turned to her husband, Wade, and said: "Oh no. Something is really wrong."

She started the next day on her own translation of the Coptic transcription, also posted on the National Geographic Web site. That's when she came across what she considered a major, almost unbelievable error. It had to do with the translation of the word "daimon," which Jesus uses to address Judas. The National Geographic team translates this as "spirit," an unusual choice and inconsistent with translations of other early Christian texts, where it is usually rendered as "demon." In this passage, however, Jesus' calling Judas a demon would completely alter the meaning. "O 13th spirit, why do you try so hard?" becomes "O 13th demon, why do you try so hard?" A gentle inquiry turns into a vicious rebuke.

Then there's the number 13. The Gospel of Judas is thought to have been written by a sect of Gnostics known as Sethians, for whom the number 13 would indicate a realm ruled by the demon Ialdabaoth. Calling someone a demon from the 13th realm would not be a compliment. In another passage, the National Geographic translation says that Judas "would ascend to the holy generation." But DeConick says it's clear from the transcription that a negative has been left out and that Judas will not ascend to the holy generation (this error has been corrected in the second edition). DeConick also objected to a phrase that says Judas has been "set apart for the holy generation." She argues it should be translated "set apart from the holy generation" — again, the opposite meaning. In the later critical edition, the National Geographic translators offer both as legitimate possibilities.

These discoveries filled her with dread. "I was like, this is bad, and these are my friends," she says. It's worth noting that it didn't take DeConick months of painstaking research to reach her conclusions. Within minutes, she thought something was wrong. Within a day, she was convinced that significant mistakes had been made. Why, if it was so obvious to her, had these other scholars missed it? Why had they seen a good Judas where, according to DeConick, none exists?

And:

This year DeConick held a conference on the Gospel of Judas at Rice. Many of the marquee names in biblical scholarship were there, including Meyer and Pagels. It was a cordial event, no thrown books or postlecture fistfights. Still, it was hard to miss the tension. When Meyer spoke, DeConick could be seen shaking her head and whispering to a colleague. One scholar referred to Meyer's defense of the original translation as "desperate" — causing him to laugh good-naturedly, if a bit defensively, too.

At one point, Pagels grabbed the microphone to say that she did not wish to be associated with Ehrman's positive take on Judas. She also, strangely, distanced herself from the book she had written with King. The word that the National Geographic team translated as "spirit" King translated as "god" — a choice Pagels said she now regretted. Even so, Pagels, like Meyer, pushed for a middle ground between a good Judas and a bad Judas, saying that interpretations that "eliminate the positive and emphasize the negative are no more adequate to interpreting the text as a whole." Pagels did not make herself available for an interview with The Chronicle, despite multiple requests over several weeks.

King did agree to talk about the book. She, too, regrets that translation. "'God' was pushing it far over the top," she says. But there were no particularly good options, and leaving that word untranslated (the option Pagels says she now prefers) presents its own problems, especially in a book intended for a general reader. As for whether the National Geographic team's interpretation led other scholars astray, King is unwilling to point fingers. "Did they get it wrong? I don't know," she says. "There's probably no one who agrees completely with Bart Ehrman's or Marvin Meyer's essays," she says, but she adds that's not unusual with early interpretations of new texts.

All of which seems to suggest that second, third, and fourth-century gnostic texts do indeed help us understand (wait for it!) what some second, third, and fourth-century gnostics believed. Shocking. Oh, and that many contemporary scholars of those gnostic texts have agendas. Surprising. And they tend to disagree with one another about nearly everything (even while insisting they've discovered "authentic" or "real" Christianity). Duly noted. A good piece (seriously).

...are congratulating themselves on being willing to smile and endure the approaching World Youth Day '08:

As a Sydney Protestant I consider it an honour that our city is
to host World Youth Day. Protestantism is a protest. Our protest is
against the enormity of the claims of the Roman Catholic
Church.

Some people are born as Protestants. They are anti-Roman
Catholic because of their own tribal roots. They have no belief
other than that Roman Catholics are wrong. But Protestantism is not
tribalism. It is the belief in the sole authority of the Bible. The
Bible explains to us that salvation is only by the generosity of
God. This salvation comes through Christ alone, and is received by
faith without any works on our part. All is to the glory of God
alone.

So we protest against Roman Catholic claims to authority. We
object to the Pope claiming to be the Vicar of Christ. We reject
all claims to authority that imply the insufficiency of scripture.
We reject any implication that Jesus's work on the cross was
insufficient or is received by more than faith or requires some
other mediator. ...

I will not be welcoming the Pope, going out to see him or waving
a flag. Given what I have said, the Pope wouldn't expect me to. But
I am certainly not going to pray for rain on his parade. Remember,
our Lord said that our Father in heaven sends sun and rain on all -
as the Bible puts it the "just and unjust" alike. This is God
giving secular support. We should want our Government to do the
same.